Associate Artist Programme
The Programme
The Associate Artist Programme is a 9-month residency for emerging and established theatre makers to create new work. The offer includes free space at NDT Broadgate, dramaturgy, networking as well as a rehearsal and development showing. The residency will embed artists in the heart of our working culture, creating thought-provoking, challenging and culturally inclusive theatre.
We want to work with Black and Global Majority writers and theatre makers who want to create theatre that departs from the traditional Western storytelling, experimenting with fresh, contemporary, and unconventional methods.
The Artists
Anyebe Godwin
Chirag Lobo
Chirag is an actor and theatre maker from Mumbai who moved to London to study at GSMD after receiving the Fishmongers Ben Travers Scholarship. He graduated in 2020 and has done multiple R&D’s with the likes of Tara Theatre and on Oladipo Agboluaje’s new play, Camellias. He is also co-writer and performer of Butterflies of Life (Pleasance, JST) with Daniel Adeosun. Chirag was Creative Associate at Jermyn Street Theatre (2020-2021) and is currently on the Soho Writers Lab (2021-2022)
Dijah Zahra
Hailing from South London, Dijah is a actress and a writer. Taking influences from her Afro-Caribbean background Dijah enjoys incorporating music into her work whilst tackling both challenging but important material.
Edi De Melo Cardoso
Edi is an ambitious London based actor and writer who is passionate about theatre that challenges the way we share stories and amplifies marginalised voices and diversity. Edi trained at Mountview and recently made his stage debut on The Play That Goes Wrong UK Tour. This residency marks the beginning of his journey to develop his debut play a one man show called ‘Mulatto Boy’ which explores the relationship between personal identity and national identity in Britain.
Enoch Lwanga
Enoch is Ugandan Creative Artist born in South-East London. He is passionate about work that elevates the community he grew up in, shining a light on worlds he recognises but is yet to see on stage, both analysing and celebrating them whilst encouraging discourse amongst the people within these communities.
Upon graduating from Central school of Speech & Drama’s BA Acting Course (CDT), he has worked as an actor, performing in various theatres across the UK, co-written and directed a two time sold out musical called Love thy Fro and facilitates for various theatre companies for young people.
Esther-Rennae Walker
Esther-Rennae is a storyteller and creative producer from London. She began her creative journey through filmmaking; inspired to create stories where she could see herself and her community honestly and imaginatively represented. Her latest micro-short, 56 Black Men was selected for Wha’Gwan film festival ‘21 which earned her a feature in the Evening Standard. Her latest work for stage, ‘Places of Me’ was produced at Theatre Peckham’s Tongue-Tied Festival’21. After producing at Half Moon Theatre, Esther-Rennae was commissioned by LU Arts to produce The Chronicles of Black Joy podcast.
Ilayda McIntosh
IIayda is aTurkish and Jamaican multidisciplinary creative, writer/poet and actor. She graduated with a BA English & Drama degree from Queen Mary University in 2019. After being furloughed in the first lockdown, she set up a digital platform/community called Roots Journal which explores heritage, culture, identity and more through conversation and various art forms. The stories and explorations through this space informed a lot of her thematic interests as a actor and writer. In 2021, she took part in the National Youth Theatre and she is also currently on Talawa’s Writers Group 2022 cohort.
Peyvand Sadeghian
Peyvand is a Performer and Performance maker who wants to make work for the curious and socially engaged. Their work takes an interdisciplinary approach and combines performance, puppetry and text. Springing from her own experience as a woman of mixed immigrant heritage, and growing up in one of the poorest parts of the UK , common themes include resistance, displacement, and memory. Recent work includes Dual دوگانه (Vault Festival Show of the Week
Somebody Jones
Somebody Jones is a Los Angeles native playwright/dramaturg, currently living, working, and dreaming in London. Jones received a bachelor’s in Theatre with an Emphasis in Playwrighting from the University of Southern California and a master’s in Dramaturgy and Writing for Performance from Goldsmiths University of London. Jones’s work celebrates and champions Black culture in all of its charms and complexities. The playwright primarily works within the genres of horror, magical realism, verbatim, and recently, Black fantasy.
The name Somebody Jones means the more you run from your past, the more you'll run into it.
Cheryl Ndione
Cheryl is a Theatre Maker, Coach, and Founder of youth theatre organisation, Purple Moon Drama.
She has written 3 plays; Black Beth, written in 2019 on Soho Writer's Lab was long listed for the Verity Bargate Award and was short listed, and came Highly Commended, for the Tony Craze Award.
Saturn Return, written in 2020, was Directed by Abigail Sewell as part of Tamasha's Digital Scratch.
For The Love Of A Primary Caregiver went up as working title, Apple, at The VAULTS in 2020 and again in 2021 at The Pleasance as part of Nouveau Riche’s Future Is Noir programme.
Anyebe Godwin Anteyi grew up in South East London and trained at Rose Bruford College. Acting credits include: Foxes (Theatre 503/Defibrillator Theatre) Amsterdam (Actor’s Touring Company, Theatre Royal Plymouth and Orange Tree Theatre), Little Baby Jesus (JMK Award/Orange Tree Theatre).
As a writer Anyebe has trained on Soho Writer’s lab (2019/2020), Hightide Writer’s Collective (2021) and Young Vic Neighbourhood Voices (2021/2022). His debut play ‘Bad Blood’ a play about Sickle Cell had a rehearsed reading in August 2021 and is still currently in development.